Dale Doré and Ivan Bond 329international marketing of sport hunting by sponsoring visits of hunting
journalists and by its contributions towards paying for the ZATSO stand at
the annual shows of Safari Club International.
The government also provides indirect support through the Ministry of
Mines, Environment and Tourism. More specifically, sport hunting is one of
the responsibilities of the Department of National Park and Wildlife, which
played a key role in establishing CAMPFIRE during the 1980s and, later, in
the down-listing of elephants at the CITES convention. This allowed limited
trade in ivory and maintained the quota of elephant that could be hunted.
Over the last 10 years, however, state involvement in sport hunting has
steadily declined. This is partly attributable to economic reform policies
and the transformation of the department into a statutory fund. It may also
be due to the scarcity of government revenues and because the private
sector and NGOs have become increasingly involved in sport hunting.
Nonetheless, the Department of National Park and Wildlife still plays a crucial
role in setting hunting quotas and controlling hunting activities.CONCLUDING REMARKS
If Appropriate Authority had not been devolved to the council, there would
not have been the rationale for maintaining a large proportion of Kanyurira as
wildlife habitat. As a result of this change, the people of Kanyurira have
benefited economically at the district, community and household levels. Thus,
while substantial improvements can still be made to CAMPFIRE, the net effect
of the policy changes has been positive.
One area that requires resolution is the struggle for proprietorship between
the producer community and the council over the management of wildlife.
The community’s weak proprietorship over wildlife and control over the benefits
derived from wildlife is reflected in the high variability in revenue paid to the
ward (Bond 1999). For example, the incorporation of additional agricultural
land in the Ward Wildlife Committee’s 1998 land use plan was contested by
the council (Taylor 1998), which then refused to pay the ward its wildlife
dividend. As a result, fence minders were not paid and the wildlife fence fell
into disrepair.
Other cases of this dependency and lack of proprietorship are illustrated
by the selection of the safari operator and the setting of quotas. In 1997, the
final selection of operators was done by the council’s Finance Committee,
without any representation from Kanyurira’s wildlife committee. (In 1995 during
a participatory evaluation of the agents of change in the ward, the incumbent
safari operator was identified as the ‘most important agent of change’.) In
the case of quota setting, the community had decided not to increase the
1997 quota, despite evidence that elephant populations were increasing, yet
the Department of National Parks and Wild Life ignored these recommendations
and set the quota at higher levels.
Although these examples illustrate the underlying contradiction between
the community’s relatively weak proprietary rights compared to its wildlife
management responsibilities, there are indications of change. The Secretary
for Mines, Environment and Tourism announced in July 2000 that the devolution18sporthunting.P65 329 22/12/2004, 11:05